I love disaster movies. Weather catastrophe, geological upheavals or
cosmic threats it doesn’t matter I love them all. Now throw that all
into a Sword & Sandal flick and you’ve almost no chance of
disappointing me. So it would seem that director Paul W.S. Anderson made
a film with just me in mind. So how did it fair?
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"Are you not entertained! |
I enjoyed the hell out of this movie! Now does that mean I think it’s a
good movie? That’s a tougher question as it doesn’t have an ounce of
originality in its pretty little head as it basically places Ridley
Scott’s
Gladiator at the feet of
Dante’s Peak with a couple borrowed elements from
Titanic.
The film is populated with stock characters you’ve seen a dozen times
which saves Paul W.S. Anderson from not having to really explain
anybody’s motivation and thus get to the disaster that much quicker.
Which is what we’re all here to see, well maybe a few women are here
hankering to see Kit Harrington’s abs, but mostly it’s the carnage.
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Abtacular! |
The movie begins with the Roman army slaughtering a village of Celts
who apparently rebelled against the Empire. General Evil (Kiefer
Sutherland’s character is actually named Corvus but for the sake of this
review he will be henceforth known as Evil) orders all of the Celts
killed to set an example to all like minded people. Somehow a little
Celtic boy named Milo is the sole survivor and, after watching his
parents brutally killed and his people exterminated, he is captured by a
group of slavers.
This little boy skips the Conan the Barbarian “Wheel of Pain” body
building routine and just jumps ahead to the gladiator portion of his
life where he is now played by Kit Harrington. To the fans of
gladiatorial sports he is simply known as The Celt, he is a bad-ass with
a sword and all opponents fall before him like wheat on harvest day. He
then gets the Russell Crowe transfer from the sticks to
The Show with minimal of effort or screen time.
It’s on his way to Pompeii and the big time that he meets the love
interest Cassia (Emily Browning), we know she is the girl for him
because though she is a citizen of the Roman Empire she hates Rome, and
her and her personal slave are besties. Cassia has cut her Rome vacation
short due to the unwanted attentions of General Evil, who is now
Senator Evil.
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“I try to do ten evil things before breakfast.” |
Cassia’s parents (Jared Harris and Carrie-Anne Moss) need serious funds
for their planned renovations of Pompeii and Senator Evil offers to be
their patron, but of course he’s got strings attached to this as he
later reveals that if Cassia doesn’t marry him he will have her family
branded as traitors to the Empire and killed. Basically Kiefer is
playing Snidely Whiplash and the only reason he doesn’t end up tying
Cassia to some train tracks is because they haven’t gotten around to
inventing trains yet.
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“Friends, Romans, country men…lend me a script.” |
Meanwhile, Milo finds himself in another scene blatantly ripped off from
Gladiator
as he and his new best friend and fellow gladiator Atticus (Adewale
Akinnuoye-Agbaj) must perform in a re-enactment of a Roman victory, and
of course it’s of the genocide of Milo’s people, but surprise surprise
it seems ole Milo and Atticus are just too awesome to lose and wipe the
floor with their enemies. Who saw that coming?
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“Did you see Russel Crowe out there?” |
Historical Note:
Gladiatorial games were a business much as sporting events are today,
only slightly less homophobic, and as a business having your property
fighting to the death every time they step into an arena would be
fiscally irresponsible. Less than 10% of fights between gladiators ended
in death. This does not count criminals or Christians who would be the
ones doing fatal re-enactments of big battles and not the professional
gladiators. Having your two best gladiators’ fight each other to the
death would be just plain stupid.
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Mount Vesuvius erupts! |
The volcanic eruption kind of interrupts the games and the nasty
tantrums of Senator Evil. Now we start getting what we paid our $10
bucks for as the coliseum collapses, lava bombs strike the city, and
crowds of people stampede for safety. At some point Cassia and Milo fell
in love (it involved a horse ride, chicks dig horses) so Milo has to
rescue her from certain doom, both the doom of an erupting volcano
and the continued machinations of Senator Evil who should really be
trying to get the hell out of Pompeii and worry about his love life
later. But you see he is
EVIL!
Disaster Movie Note: Seeing
as this story takes place in 79 AD one character is missing. The
person, usually the hero, who tries to warn the populace of the danger
but is ignored. During this time period you weren’t going to run into
volcanologist unless they were priests worshiping the god Vulcan. So all
we get in this film is the Master of the Games warning Jared Harris
that the stadium may be structurally unsound after some minor quakes.
He is of course ignored.
Paul W.S. Anderson was not content to just give us a rousing pyrokinetic
show with lava bombs (Note: There is no evidence that Vesuvius lobbed
any such things) but he decided to give us a tsunami as well. The volcano causes the tide to recede and then to rush back in over the
city carrying away ships and people in an awesome display of power.
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Wait, Pompeii isn’t even a port city, how is this happening? |
The CGI carnage is rather well done and you can see this is where the
budget went (certainly not to the script department) and one cannot but
gleefully giggle as you watch Senator Evil in a chariot trying to
outrace Milo while the city explodes around them. It’s just gloriously
goofy.
So yes, this is not the greatest story ever told, but by Vulcan’s beard
it was fun. Paul W.S. Anderson delivers what he promised and the cast
all provide serviceable performances, with the exception of Kiefer
Sutherland whose over-the-top performance and the strange British/Hans
Gruber accent is more of a marvel than the volcano, and once again love
conquerors all…oh…um…well most of the time it does.
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"You know nothing, Jon Snow. |
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